Bhutan records more than 700 bird species in an area the size of Switzerland, and the reason is written into the constitution: the country must keep at least sixty per cent of its land under forest, and currently keeps rather more. Add an unbroken gradient from subtropical foothills at 200 metres to alpine scrub above 4,000, and you have habitat continuity that has been lost almost everywhere else in the eastern Himalayas.
For a birder that means a long list with genuinely hard-to-see species on it — Ward's trogon, beautiful nuthatch, rufous-necked hornbill, the critically endangered white-bellied heron — and birding done largely from a road, at a pace that suits people who like to stop.
Season, and one responsibility
Spring is the peak: birds in breeding plumage, singing and therefore findable. Autumn is quieter with clearer air, and brings the black-necked cranes into Phobjikha. Winter is excellent in the lower valleys; the monsoon is best avoided.
Bhutan's forests are intact partly because of how the country manages its visitors, and birders carry a particular share of that. Playback is discouraged and prohibited outright for threatened species, and nests are watched from a distance. Local guides know both the sites and the sensitivities.
The pages below cover the species, the sites, the seasons and the gear — and, when the reading is done, the birding tours we run across all of it.
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